Meet Dennis Rome - The Poisoner

"If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?" William Shakespeare

Dennis Rome is Hazard’s Donald Blake homage. Oprey M. Friday, hot-blooded destroyer, can turn into the relatively sane person known as Dennis Rome by saying his activation word “Pandion!”. Fun stuff.

"There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it."

- Chanakya

The young Dennis spent the first two years of his life with his aunt and her husband, Jake, and became very attached to them. When his father remarried in 19XX, and reunited the family again in St. Almond, with his new wife, Mindy, Dennis showed visible signs of distress at being separated from his aunt. He went on to become a rather peculiar child, solitary in his habits, and made no effort to socialise with others his own age.

When he was old enough to read, he favoured sensationalist non-fiction accounts of murders, and Dr. Hawley, the notorious poisoner, was a particular favourite. By the time he reached his teens he had developed an unhealthy fascination with Heinrich Himmler, who was notorious for his role as one of Adolph Hitler's head assistants in the Third Reich of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was particularly known using the deadly Zyklon-B gas to murder prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. He also read widely on the occult, claiming knowledge of Wiccans and local covens, trying to involve local children in bizarre occult ceremonies, which involved sacrificing a horse on one occasion. The subsequent disappearance of a number of local horses, around the same time, may have pointed to a more regular occurrence of these sacrificial ceremonies.

Academically, his only interests were chemistry ( though he was always interested in the effects poison can have on the human body), forensic science and toxicology, but the limited school coverage of these subjects forced him to advance his studies through extra-curricular reading. His father encouraged him, buying Rome a chemistry set, which absorbed his attention for hours at a time. By the age of 13, Rome’s comprehensive knowledge of toxicology enabled him to convince local chemists that he was, in fact, 17, and he procured a dangerous quantity of the poisons antimony, digitalis and arsenic for ‘study’ purposes, as well as quantities of the heavy metal, thallium. When he was high school student, he was able to poison the food at the school cafeteria killing 12 students and framed a dupe (the janitor) for the crime.

Keen to put his knowledge of poisons to the test, his first victim was fellow science pupil, William Kennedy, who suffered an extended period of vomiting, painful cramps and headaches, due to the judicious administration, by Rome, of a cocktail of poisons that left medical experts baffled. Kennedy was lucky to survive, probably because Rome couldn’t fully satisfy his scientific curiosity: monitoring the illness of his victim when he was sick at home wasn’t feasible. So he decided to focus on a group to whom he had unlimited access: his own family. Poisoning his own mother and his siblings children by giving them a toxin disguised as prescription medicine, which The police initially assumed a murder/suicide

Rome considers himself a scientist who must push limits to further research into poison. He often kidnaps people off the street and exposes them to his poisons to study their effects. As the death count rises to 3800 over three days, the governor is helpless to stop the circulation of poisoned drugs. Rome has made a lot of money selling designer poisons on the black market poisons that odorless, flavorless, invisible to the eye, but he wishes to conduct a grand and epic experiment. Sometimes he blackmails and extorts money from the wealthy of the world by threatening their lives with lethal chemical agent s.

Happy Haiti

Nearly 7,000 people have now died from cholera in Haiti in an epidemic which has become one of the worst of recent decades. As of December, on top of the deaths, the Haitian government had reported more than 520,000 cholera cases with 200 new sufferers appearing each day. It was "one of the largest cholera outbreaks in modern history to affect a single country." There are also 21,000 cases in the neighboring Dominican Republic where there have been 363 deaths, of the January 12, 2010 earthquake which killed more than 225,000 people. The cholera outbreak erupted in October, 2010 and has been widely blamed on a camp of UN peacekeepers from Nepal (Whom was 'contaminated' by Dennis after health checks performed by the UN). Lawyers representing victims have demanded the United Nations pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.

. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Haiti is living a nightmare. An outbreak of plague decimates the population.

Gwai Lo Experiments

Captives were poisoned with phosgene gas while others were injected with potassium cyanide. Some subjects were exposed to 20,000 volts of electricity (for fun). The death of all subjects was closely documented and observe by Dennis. Those who survived were later disposed of by lethal injections or dissected while alive.
Dennis' work ensured a growing customer base and by 20xx he was able to relocate a massive, dedicated underground facility to new home at Linfen, Shanxi which rivaled in size Nazi Germany's Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The new facility was comprised of administrative buildings, laboratories, barracks, a prison, an autopsy-dissecting building and three giant compactors which handled the disposal of bodies.
One important part of experimentation was testing frostbite for recreational purposes. Similar experiments were conducted by the Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi who placed naked prisoners in sub-freezing temperatures and have their limbs beaten with sticks so that they would understand when the freezing process was over. Later, the bodies were defrosted using a wide range of experimental techniques.
As well as many other experiments including suspending subjects upside d own to determine how long it took for them to choke to death. Others had air injected into them to test for the onset of embolisms and others had horse urine injected into their kidneys.

Dennis Rome was an unscrupulous man who worked in the rugged black market human organ trafficking. To ensure the quality of the goods, his network preferentially attacked upper-middle class people, as they felt it had a healthier lifestyle. Rome lured his victims at night, seducing in nightclubs, then took them to a safe house where they attacked and ripped bodies alive sometimes leaving them to die.

Credo

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
- Albert Einstein

1. College of Arcanobiology
2. Knights of Gastronomy

Note: Specialized gear are made by specialized artificers. Equipment such as near-magical steampunk devices and otherwise enhanced technology. Powersuits, and with various enchantments. Such as the ability to phase.

Capabilities

Powers

He’s immunised herself to known toxins and drugs via mithridatisation and other techniques, after all Rome’s favorite test subject is himself Dennis's metabolism and respiratory system were chemically altered by an antidote for poison gas--he was afterwards immune to the hazardous effects of breathing toxic fumes; however, normal air would prove to be fatal to him. He had the ability to expel poisonous gasses from his mouth (Rome exhales toxins). He can also emit highly acidic gasses via jaw control; these gasses are capable of eating through thick steel locks in a matter of seconds. The teeth emit a foaming chemical poison, to which his body is immune, which causes paralysis and possibly death in whoever he bites. He can inject those with a gas that eats his victims from the inside out. He could poison others with a kiss. His skin is toxic as well, although contact with it is usually not fatal.

Emergency | His fingernails can grow into a deadly crystalline spike. They are coated in a venom that inflicts paralysis, though the impalement itself can prove fatal. Rome could not consciously control these nails yet, so they are only triggered in overwhelming situations. His killing techniques are "Venom Piercing Hands". Those who come into contact with Rome's spike fall dead at his feet. It is unknown why this happens but his victims foam at the mouth upon death as such it is thought that his sting is a neurotoxin. This sting needs twenty minutes to reform after use.

He is a psychic surgeon trained to quickly reconstruct cells to their previous or healthy state. Using only his hands, he can heal and even "unheal" whatever he has done. For more detailed work, he would use a silver based cream on their hands which acts as a conductor to their ability. His gift allowed him to heal others with a touch, or enhance their natural powers, also with a touch.

Thrives on evil, increasing his health and strength when behaving amorally, while becoming weaker and sicker when doing the right thing.Dennis Rome's health, beauty and strength were linked to his behaviour. Whenever he engaged in criminal and amoral behaviour, he would grow stronger, healthier and more beautiful, becoming a near perfect human specimen. In turn when he acted unselfish and kind, he would become weaker, sick and nauseated. Thus Dennis abused alcohol, drugs and tobacco, had sex with strangers and assaulted and killed innocents to become as strong and healthy as possible.

He easily moves faster than the human-eye, and most superhuman eyes. His speed, agility, reflexes, body coordination, and balance are superhumanly enhanced. He also has a low form of superspeed that allows him to attack rapidly.

Rome is an empath, except with two nasty limitations. First, he can only perceive pain and suffering of anyone in a he can feel the pain of anyone/everyone within a 4 to 5 mile radius. Second, he can't turn it off. Basically, he does his best to ensure that at least a mile or more around his residence is as free of any crime or persistent misery as possible, so he can actually sleep at night. This is one of the reasons he is incredibly caring towards prize specimens, while highly lethal against enemy targets.

This dude has a talent, a phenomenal ability to spot vulnerability in any opponent, be it in anatomy (some kind of intuitive function-from-form derivation) or in combat style.

Note: Those who copy his powers are subject to the weaknesses thereof

Scanning Dennis’s mind means being exposed to what he has endured, including all of the pain. This is a sufficient shock to kill most telepaths.

Equipment

He specialized in poisons, including gases, darts, etc. Rome's "virus" has magical properties. In fact, it's derived from the blood of a demigod. Rome's also an arcanobiologist, specializing in studying the biology of things far from mainstream science, like gods, techno-organic viruses, myths. He weaponizes mythology in the form of chemical and biological agents and looks to integrate god-given magic with science. Of course, those compounds allow him to do quite nasty and potent things, provided he gets to experiment at length with those (and has enough test subjects to burn through).

Rome is equipped with lots of scalpels, scissors ( can cut through human flesh, bone, and even some metals) and surgical instruments. Besides carrying two sleeping gas canisters in the back that used to immobilize his victims.

His domino mask (made from what appears to be dark jellyfish flesh) will create breathable gases inside his body so it will have the same effect as if wearing a space suit, allowing him to breathe despite being surrounded by air. Since his mask helps him get around, targeting it could likely lead to his downfall. When Dennis comes across air or has to have gas, he uses his Rebreather. When Dennis needs to conceal his identity from video surveilance, he use this electro-magnet to erase the evidence of his presence

Abilities

Besides honing his arsenal masterfully, Rome is able to dodge a range of attacks and bullets with his flexible build. He can make jumps and breaks whenever needed, and can hold out three times his weight due to his powerful upper arm hold. He can make dead-sprints for escaping in a matter of seconds, can push off objects, such as walls, floors, or the ceiling itself in a powerful form with the greatest of ease.

By sensing the enemy's killing intent and by using the minimum movement he is able to dodge strong attacks. In addition, Dennis has apparently developed a formidable set of fighting and acrobatic skills in his life as a runaway. Specialist in hand-to-hand combat with super-humans. He was a more-than-capable hand-to-hand combatant, and once took on an entire room of thugs single-handedly. Rome has trained in gymnastics and martial arts ‘acrobats’. This has helped him to become one of the most agile men in the world. He can do anything involving flipping, jumping and soaring through the air. His acrobatic skill givers him agility that allows him to evade assaults as well as move in quickly for a kill when necessary.

He's spent a lot of time fiddling with locks until picking them has become a well-rehearsed motion, even when most would be shaking too much to hold a pin. While rather good at bypassing even sophisticated security, he gets the most mileage perhaps out of picking the common doorknob.

Dennis:"Return now and I promise that you will live"

Superterrorist:"I will never give up. I am mutant, the ultimate evolutionary potential. I have fought you a thousand times already in my mind.

You lost this fight before you ever faced me.

Why are you smiling?"

Dennis:"I love hearing you muties bark like that. It makes all the more rewarding when I extract your organs"

Another bread-and-butter skill one acquires is broadly summarized as "Sleight of Hand." Very often, it was quite convenient to be able to pocket something discretely. To hone this skill, he often rolled pennies, rocks, or whatever else over his knuckles to pass the time walking here and there. He keeps this habit up to this day. As his life progressedRome also became an accomplished pilot, handling any sort of biplane with ease.

He is quite the master when it comes to undercover work. He benefits from the best crime-fighting resources the US government has to offer their agent as well as his own decades of experience in the field. There are few hideouts he cannot discover, few plots he cannot uncover, and few criminals he cannot stop. He moves forward with the times. He does his best to stay updated on criminal activity and movement and sharpens his mental tools of the trade.

He is also a genius at artificial power amplification through surgery, and has increased many villains’ existing powers to new heightened levels. He is an gifted surgeon and inventor that has created or re-created several of superheroes enemies over the years. Rome is primarily interested in working on superhumans. He has created numerous low-grade superhumans as a scholar in the College of Arcanobiology, and even had the opportunity to work using Reactively Adapting DNA. He also enjoys attempting strange and groundbreaking medical acts on superhumans, such as grafting infernal substances all across and within a subject’s body.

..Rome has always been a "behind the scenes" actor.

Motives

• sadism (make them suffer);
• boredom (wants to have fun by having a challenge of wits with law enforcement);

Looks: The Spirit, Green Hornet

1. Infiltr8
2. Snowfall
3. Gas to pass
4. Vampyre
5. Nightrayd

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